


The Redeemer

by greenkangaroo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Politics, Tevinter Being Tevinter, Walkabout, if I don't actually say I'm important I'm not right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: Dorian takes a holiday and gets involved with both a big burly qunari and the apocalypse, roughly in that order.
Relationships: Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	The Redeemer

Dorian could blame the whole thing on Felix, if he felt up for it. If he felt cruel and selfish enough.

Despite what many might thing, Dorian- well. He can be remarkably selfish, but. 

Not now.

“He’s going to destroy us all,” Dorian says, and he means it.

“You can’t take the time,” Felix pleads. He wants someone else. Anyone else.

“Andraste’s smallclothes I can’t,” Dorian tells him. “Vigil. Two years. They’ll eat it up.” 

“How-”

“Maevris owes me a favor.” 

“Dorian!”

“Let’s go.” 

-

The Herald is- a snag, Dorian will admit that. 

A delicate, sharp eared snag who cocks her hip to one side and asks what she should get a mad cultist out to murder her. 

“A fruit basket, everyone loves those,” Dorian tells her, and thinks with some dismay, oh no.

I’ve found a friend.

-

She’s more than a friend. 

She’s a commander and a fool and a brilliant, passionate light of a being.

She tries to spare Felix, bless her. 

Dorian watches people die for him- the sharp eyed Seeker and the dwarf who talks and sees too much.

And the Bull, of course.

-

Oh, the Bull.

If Lavellan is a snag he’s a full on rip, a tear so severe that even the finest silk cannot be sewn back together. He’s a living breathing tower of reasons why Dorian should turn around and leave like Felix wanted. The danger is real.

Danger’s always been a bit of a turn on, though. Comes with the broom closets.

-

When the archdemon lands on the pitiful wooden defenses Dorian catches a glimpse of it, and its rider.

He knows.

He knows as he herds desperate terrified southerners through the chantry, he knows as he grabs the one named Cremisus under the arm and hauls him without giving him a moment to properly cuss out the ‘Altus’, he knows when they make camp.

He knows when they find her and he sits by her, warming her slowly with his hands as Madame De Fer across from him does. 

He knows. 

-

The correspondence from Tevinter becomes increasingly frantic and then finally resigned. Vigils. They’re good for something after all.

He attacks the library with a ferocity he hasn’t had to unsheathe since his days in the Vyrantium circle. Somewhere there are answers. There are always answers. He will find them.

He is single minded, when it comes right down to it. 

“Are you planning on telling them?” Alexius asks, when they are permitted to work together in the locked study that has become his prison.

“Tell them what?” Dorian asks. He tries not to feel the sting at Alexius’s clear disappointment.  
  
He has other things to worry about. 

-

The letter from father is…

well. 

Lavellan wants to go and he can’t tell her no. The Iron Bull wants to go and he can most certainly tell him no, for all the good it will do. 

The fight is old. Older than his companions can know. 

“Don’t leave it like this, Dorian,” Lavellan tells him and outside they wait. 

Halward watches him carefully.

“What do you hope to achieve?” He asks.

Dorian loves his father enough to give him an honest answer. “I don’t know. But I know it has to happen here.” 

“When they know..”

Dorian shrugs. “I’ve already been spat on. It’s almost becoming quaint.”

“Dorian,” and there’s pleading there, a father begging his son to come home, to be safe.

“No,” Dorian says. It’s an order. Halward Pavus obeys. 

-

“He would have said yes,” Cole tells Dorian as they stare out over the clammy undead infested waters of Crestwood. It’s fascinating, really. If Dorian had the time he’d study the phenomena himself, or call upon one of the colleges to do it.

Wouldn’t that just turn Crestwood upside down, a troupe of Tevinter scholars with measuring calculators and veil-adjusters. 

Dorian sighs. “I know.” 

“You didn’t ask because he would have said yes,” Cole says sadly. “and if he did, you’d feel guilty. Why?” 

Dorian adjusts the strap for his staff. He can hear Lavellan and Sera arguing over the map. 

“It’s a human thing, Cole.” He says. 

-

After Crestwood (which has not superseded the Fallow Mire as the worst possible place to be a necromancer in the South but is certainly coming in for a close second) Dorian spends as much time as he can with Sera. 

She’s uneducated and dirty and she has the best jokes. She asks bold questions, things that make him uncomfortable in a different way than Solas’ old ribbing about slaves and he really needs to remember to respond to Maevris’s last letter but where was he?

Ah, Sera. Who apparently stores all her arrows in his arse, impressive. 

According to half the Imperium he has a stick up it. 

Sera is witty and wise and free. 

Free.

That word is starting to mean a lot of things. 

-

“This,” Dorian says to the Bull as he sets down his tankard, “is only happening once.” 

“Sure, big guy,” the Iron Bull says.

It happens more than once.

-

The Winter Palace is truly beautiful, Dorian means it when he says that. It makes something low in his belly go tight. All the dancing with words and promises and favors, the bloodless deaths that play out on the dance floor. It’s home, albeit with fewer candied dates and almond flowers.

that Lavellan makes it through the night is either proof of Andraste’s holy hand guiding her or an immense amount of luck that she should learn to bottle.

“We did alright, didn’t we?” She asks him later. 

“You did very well. I’m very proud that some of those lessons stuck.” He looks out over the topiaries. Each and every one is cut into a bird that he’s certain doesn’t actually exist.  
Lavellan puts a bottle of wine down between them. “You think it’ll work? Briala an’ Celene?” 

“Who’s to say?” Dorian asks. He watches as she pours. “They- care for one another.”

Lavellan snorts. “You care for Bull.”

“A bit on the nose.” 

“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Lavellan asks, sounding tense. “What happens if you’re just too different and he rubs the back of his neck and tells you he needs to get back to work and you’d rather throw his stupid desk off the fucking battlements but you can’t caus’ it’s a SHEM desk and you’re too small?”  
  
Dorian smiles and his heart breaks. “Well then, my dear, you either drag him down onto the desk or you ask Bull politely to throw the shem desk over the battlements.”

Lavellan looks at him sideways. “I like you, Dorian,” she says.

Dorian takes a sip of wine. It’s horrid. He loves it.

“I like you too, Lavellan,” he says. 

-

Dorian has learned which of his misguided countrymen might know him. By the time the Inquisition has managed to get a foothold in the Western Approach he’s gotten quite good at killing those particular Venatori before they can start throwing around important words that no one should be hearing.

That Erimond doesn’t know his face is both gratifying and the deepest insult Dorian can imagine. 

Then he’s in the Fade so it’s all fine, really. 

Except for how it isn’t.  
  
-

“Don’t touch anything,” Dorian whispers. 

“I don’t think any of us want to,” Lavellan says. She’s looking pale under her valleslin, Blackwall has turned an interesting shade of green. 

Dorian does not tell them that he was talking to himself.

-

All the Nightmare can come up with is comments about his father and alright, fair enough. The thing could dig deeper but it doesn’t particularly care to. It doesn’t consider them or Lavellan a credible threat. 

Unfortunate for it. If Dorian felt any pity he’d almost consider putting on a kettle for tea, asking if the Nightmare was having a good day, if it needed to talk. 

Then of course all of its limbs were flying in every direction so there went that. 

Dorian considers being the one to stay behind, for just an instant. It would solve nearly all of his problems. He’d die being the Good Tevinter, Lavellan could save the world without his nefarious influence, when the truth came out he wouldn’t be around to deal with the fallout. Just as good as a three day bender without all the responsibility at the end. 

He sees the Bull, in his mind’s eye. 

Stroud stays behind. 

-

When the truth comes out about Blackwall Dorian does his best not to pat himself on the back for being certain that the man was lying about something. When Lavellan comes to him with redrimmed eyes and asks for his opinion he swallows both the satisfaction and the guilt and says, "there are men who have done worse things than Thom Rainier and who were forgiven more easily. If anything, pardoning him might finally upset that damned fatalistic streak of his, and make him more fun at card games."

It's not his best joke but she laughs anyway. He asks that they keep calling him Blackwall and while Cassandra balks (because of course she does) Dorian is more than willing to go along with it. Fellow sailor in a troubled sea, and all that. 

-

The Arbor Wilds remind him of Seheron. 

They remind Bull, too.

Their tent is too close and too hot and too much of something and when they finish Bull bites hard enough to make him bleed but Dorian doesn’t say ‘katoh’, he just snarls right back.  
  
-

Lavellan asks if he wants to drink from Mythal's fountain. Dorian takes a while to answer just to enjoy the stormy look on Morrigan’s face. 

“No,” he says at last, as gently as he can. “We’ve taken too much from the elves.”

The remains of their kingdom. Their freedom. Their culture. Their ancient magical artifacts that wind up in the hands of grasping morons with no concept of buildup or efficiency who can apparently possess gray wardens at will. 

No, he will not drink.

-

The end is just as unremarkably remarkable as the beginning. 

Lavellan emerges, dusty, face drawn. Dorian cheers with the rest and there’s perhaps a bit of viciousness in his grin as he helps her down the last of the steps. 

“You know,” he says conversationally as someone thinks to go get the horses, “technically, by defeating a ranking member of House Amladaris you could argue for a place in their hierarchy. I know the paperwork. Could have it filled out and approved before the ink’s dry.”

Lavellan throws her head back and laughs. Then she pats him on the cheek. “Go to Tevinter? No, I don’t think so. You can keep it.”

“Well if you’re sure,” Dorian says. 

-

After the party Dorian has a hangover that puts every other hangover he’s ever had to shame, which is impressive. When someone comes knocking he rolls over Bull and throws a boot at the door.

“Dorian.”

It’s Josephine.

“Now.” 

-

Dorian squints. The sun is too bright, the sky is too bright, the gleaming scale of the formation of vint Legion soldiers before him is definitely too bright. 

“An entire battalion? Really?” He asks Vexillator Pollux.

“We aren’t a battalion, sir,” the Vexillator says. “We’re a group of concerned citizens.”

“Heavily armed citizens.”

“Bears down south, sir.”

“Heavily armed and armored citizens.”

“There was a sale just over the border. Lots of the boys are from Marothius, sir, you know how they feel about sales.” 

Dorian rubs his temples. He can feel the advisors behind him.

He can feel Lavellan up top, watching from her balcony. 

“Vexillator, put your men at ease and follow me and for the love of Andraste, keep. your. mouth. shut.”

“Yes Lord Archon.” 

-

If they hadn’t been his battalion- men he once fought beside and bled with- Dorian knows that Maevris wouldn’t have trusted them but that doesn’t make him feel better. 

“I could have just gone, you know,” he tells Pollux, “It would have been easy. You could have waited.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I couldn’t,” the man says.

“Why NOT?”

“There’s been an uprising, sir.” 

Dorian stares. 

The advisors stare.

Lavellan stares.

“I see. What kind?”

The Vexillator swallows hard.

“The kind that has the slaves calling you the Redeemer and the Magisterium calling for your head, sir. We got here first.” 

-

“So it was all a lie.”

“Hardly,” Dorian says. 

“You’re not an Altus.”

“I mean yes, I am. Altus means-”

“Dorian.”

Dorian sighs. “No. Very well. That was a lie. But the rest of it? Very much the truth. Felix did ask for my help, I was Alexius’s protege, I do want the Venatori wiped from the face of Thedas and I would die for you.” 

Lavellan sniffles.

“Don’t worry about me,” she says. “Worry about Bull.” 

-

“You know this adds a whole new dimension to our Arishok and Archon game,” the Iron Bull tells him.

The Chargers are nowhere in sight. Dorian has heard that Cremsius ran out of things to curse him with and took up drinking sometime in the midafternoon. 

“Thought you were older.”

“Are you calling me old?” Dorian asks. 

There are edges they aren’t touching. Dorian takes a deep breath. The Bull watches him. 

A half of a dragon tooth is carefully placed on the table. 

“I’ve an uprising to quash and some slave laws to overturn,” he says as he stands. “Assuming I live out the year, think of me fondly, Amatus.” 

Vexillator Pollux is walking into Herald’s Rest when Bull puts Dorian up against the side of the cold fireplace and puts his tongue down the Archon’s throat. 

"Dumat take me into silence SOMEONE OWES ME MONEY," he hollars out the door, which is as fine a way to start a revolution as any, Archon Pavus figures.


End file.
